Open Source Management Gains a Foothold in the Cloud

Increasingly, small and medium businesses are moving to cloud computing in order to ease maintenance chores and stabilize their IT costs. However, one challenge has been finding ways to manage corporate data moving in and out of the cloud. GroundWork Open Source and Eucalyptus Systems, two companies who have taken open source approach to product development, have teamed up to try and address that issue.GroundWork Open Source has carved out a niche by developing a suite of open source network management tools. Start up Eucalyptus was formed to take the open source model into the cloud and use it for both private and hybrid cloud services. As part of their teaming , the former has developed Groundwork Monitor Enterprise Cloud, which provides performance data for cloud services. Customers can collect information that illustrates application availability and performance data, so they can determine how well their applications are running in cloud services, such as Amazon Web Services and Eucalyptus. In addition, businesses can oversee computing environments with multiple hypervisors.

Management tools (along with security) are typically the last items that are added to emerging technologies. GroundWork Open Source and Eucalyptus Systems are trying to carve out some space in this emerging market. The two vendors have focused on an area in need of better management tools, but one challenge will be creating sufficient buzz behind their initiative. Industry giants, such as Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, have made cloud computing a significant part of their futures and will have much to say about what management tools are put into place. Consequently, Groundswork and Eucalyptus Systems may have trouble gaining attention for their work.

Such initiatives should benefit small and medium businesses. They are leading movement to cloud computing and the emergence of more robust management tools should help ensure that their cloud services run efficiently.